Archive for February, 2005
A bugs in IE 5.0 with the use of text-transform and font in the same declaration.
I found another IE 5.0 bug today.
When using the text-transform property in the same declaration as the font property, IE 5 ignores the text-transform.
For example;
div.testContainer{
text-transform:uppercase;
font:bold 12px verdana, arial, sans-serif;
}
This would totally ignore the fact that you may want the text in the testContainer to be completely capitalized.
When doing some research, I found that it didn’t help if I wrote out the font shorthand into it’s individual properties like font-size, or font-weight, like some articles claimed.
What I did find worked for me was to seperate the two, where the font tag was inherited.
In my real life example, I actually had a header defined specifically for use inside of my div container. So for our previous example I had this;
div.testContainer{
width:400px
margin:0 auto;
}
div.testContainer h1{
text-transform:uppercase;
font:bold 12px verdana, arial, sans-serif;
}
As you see I changed the previous example a little. But you get the point. I had a header that I specifically wanted to use inside of testContainer so that helped facilitate my solution. In the end, I actually took the font declaration and moved it into the div container, so the header declaration would inherit it but IE still would recognize the text-transform declaration. So now our example looks like this.
div.testContainer{
width:400px
margin:0 auto;
font:bold 12px verdana, arial, sans-serif;
}
div.testContainer h1{
text-transform:uppercase;
}
28th February 2005
The rumor is, we have company tonight.
Dad Chapman is going to be stopping by with Emily for the night to hang out and have some fun. Emily was up in Fort Wayne and Dad thought it was just a hop and skip to drop on by. Whatever. But we’re happy to have him.
Sarah was happy to get back to a normal type day. For the last week they have been working on a play, and it has been hard to control the kids. But she still had to enter all of her March information in her calendar for lessons plans, spelling words, that kind of first grade stuff.
I continued working on testing for the CSS site at work and found another IE 5 bug, so I entered it in the CSS section.
There’s probably be photos tomorrow, so check back.
Oh, and wait. Hot off the press. Christine has written another comic review. She has always been the Type A personality go-getter, but she almost didn’t make her one month turn around time. But she hates saying and not doing, just about as much as me, so that is exactly what she did.
Sections Updated: CSS | XHTML, Comics
What I’ve been reading lately
I got some gentle nudge from Jeff this weekend about when I was going to write again. He reminded me that it doesn’t have to be an EPIC – which was a good wake-up call for me. I had set a dumb goal for myself. The very first thing I wanted to write about was Kingdom Come. I picked that partly because I loved it & also because I am currently borrowing it from Jeff & he might actually expect me to return it to him someday.
The problem with this is I want to do a quick re-read before I get started – this was the kiss of death for that idea. I just haven’t carved out the time to go back over it. I don’t know who else is like me but I always have a huge stack of things on my nightstand that I am reading. And you know how busy REAL life gets…
So instead of getting an ode to Kingdom Come, I’m just going to talk about a couple of recent things I’ve been reading – another excellent Jeff suggestion – Thank you Jeff! XOXO
One of the things keeping me away from my assigned reading is the commencement of Astonishing X-men with Joss “Buffy” Whedon. Yes, I KNOW he’s not just the “Buffy guy” but Buffy (most of the time – I still can’t get over whiny Dawn - ick) rocked. Now I am as much about fab artwork as anyone but what Joss brings to the book is the same thing that hooked me to Buffy & Co. - great, snappy, dialogue & - hallelujah – a little character development. I dearly LOVE my X-men, but they can easily get stagnant.
I feel that Wolverine finally sounds like himself again. Emma is SO wonderfully icy & bitchy & Beast has rarely been so pithy. Scott is such a tool (can I say that?) I’m glad at least now he has an interesting girlfriend. And I happily welcome the return of Kitty Pryde as a central character – I just love her & the character she’s grown into. The interaction of the team & their verbal sparring is so natural it makes for a delightful read.
Can I do SPOILERS now? Skip ahead if you don’t want or like details before you read. There were just a couple of cool moments that I wanted to mention so again I say - skip ahead if you like.
The first is not so much a spoiler – it’s just I love the way the first issue brings the team back together. There is no way I can do justice to the way the dialogue & storytelling builds up to the final reveal of the costumed team toward the end of the book. But when I turned the page to see that phenomenal two page spread of everyone in uniform & Cyclops saying “…we have to astonish them.” I am telling you – I got chills! I had one of my “happy girl” moments. *laughing* I know – could I BE a bigger freak?!?
Now this is TRUE SPOILER! But, to be fair, what are we on now – is issue 9 out? I get so out of touch… I’d be surprised if you haven’t at least seen a cover or two by now that would tip the book’s hand. Colossus is back! (Pausing for a moment to do a little happy dance). This gave me my other big “goose bump moment”.
Now being a squishy romantic girly-girl you might think I was going to talk about the Kitty/Colossus reunion. Sure, it is true I enjoyed every minute of it! I have a big soft spot for that particular coupling so I won’t pretend that I didn’t eat it up. And I’m woman enough to admit it - the cover of issue 6 where Kitty’s all melting into Colossus got me all hot & bothered. Migosh! I love that image!
So, aside from the obvious “jeez-won’t-anybody-stay-dead” factor I can’t see how Joss could have handled the big guy’s return more deftly. All the team member’s reactions to him were spot on.
Sorry! Wasn’t I supposed to be making a point about three paragraphs ago? Okay my other favorite moment was in issue 6. Ord is flying away & there’s no way to stop him, right? Oh no – in a beautiful moment that was a gift to those of us steeped in the X-men culture – it was a return of the “Fastball Special”! Yippee! The thing I love the most is that Joss, with his unique gift for finding the right words, for two pages, stepped back & let the pictures tell the story. The words “Fastball Special” were nowhere to be found in this issue – but WE knew. Perfect, I tell you….
Done with spoilers – you can come back now…. *grin*
I know I can’t be the only one who lets issues stack up for a few months then reads them all in a row for that continuity rush. Early issues of Astonishing X-men may be hard to find now (thank you Fritz for ALWAYS getting me a hook up! XOXO) but this is perfect for reading in the TPB format since the story has such a great flow.
Another title worth picking up is the re-launch of the Avengers. Since this seems to be “hugs & kisses day” *laughing* – Thank you David for the recommendation! XOXO This is a BIG turn-around for me because I have NEVER been able to get into the Avengers before.
I’ve read the “Essential Avengers” because, like all the other “Essential” TPBs I’ve picked up, I’m just interested in all the history & background I missed out on by not becoming a reader until my twenties. Ah, but it didn’t grab me. Neither did any of the random issues I tried.
This new version though has got me hooked! I think the team choices are neat and interesting (I know – I had to dig DEEP for those stellar descriptive adjective choices *grin*). The prison break set up was a great kick-off & again – I’m getting that good dialogue that I so earnestly crave.
They seem to be building a pretty attention-grabbing story – what’s going on with Jessica Drew, huh? I can’t wait to find out! I am sure that some, more clever than me, may have already figured it out. As much of a thinker as I am (or pretend to be *smile*) though – I STILL like to let the story tell itself. That’s the magic!
So, I look forward to good things from the new Avengers – I hope it stays strong. Oh, & for the uninitiated like me, it might be a good idea to pick up the Avengers Finale before jumping into the new series. It helps set the tone for where they pick up in issue one.
And last but not least – Good-bye She-Hulk! I’ll miss you. I see that after one year –it’s adios again for Jen Walters. Why won’t people read this title in any incarnation? Has it got “chick-book” stamped on it – is that is? Well, I don’t care what anybody says – I think She-Hulk is an outstanding superhero! Okay, well, not that Savage version - what was that all about?
You know what’s scary – I sat down with full intention of writing about a Batman TPB I just read – you can see how well that worked! But this is good news! Now I can jump straight into my next essay & there should be another one posted soon.
Uh-huh….and this is good news, WHY? *giggle*
As (I think) Oscar Wilde said – “Life is too important to be taken seriously”
Later!
Johnny Carson (1925-2005)
I know that I am a month late on this one, but, tough cookies.
Host from the late show from 1962-1992, Johnny Carson invented interest in late night talk shows.
Johnny had quite a storied background, from serving in the Navy in World War II, to ventriloquism and a radio announcer. Private and reserved, Carson kept his private life private, except for the announcement in 2002 that he was suffering from Lung Cancer due to a lifetime of smoking.
I never saw any of his shows, but just from what I hear, he was a great talent to miss.
I have lost my flash file, how do I get it back? What is a decompiler? How do I turn .swf files into .fla files?
Now, Chris and I differ on our opinions about this.
For $79.99, you can but this program called Sothink Decompiler. You can download a Flash movie off the internet, put it in this program, and it will make it into a Flash file for you to view the work of any developer around the world, including their script.
Now, for me, having no training in Flash on my own, I have to learn everything on my own. I do no know anyone to talk to Flash about, and so my experience with moving Graphics is one I have to gain on my own. Then, there is the problem that no matter how hard I try, and the fact that I don’t do it day in and day out and probably never will, I can’t seem to just sit down and write really complex programs.
For me, this program lets me see how it is done. I am not taking graphics out of the files, and more than likely, I will rewrite a script to fit my needs, using the original for a basis of what I need. So this is a great tool to learn. I actually used it for a project where there were these burning spark effects, and I wasn’t sure how it was being done. So I took a look at the file where I viewed it, and then was able to see how they did it, and created from scratch my own interpretation for my needs.
But it’s a double edged sword that is up to the individual to use wisely. There are many downsides to using it, becoming creatively lazy, alienation from the design world for what they view as “stealing”, and possible even problems at a job if you judiciously copy another piece of work from somewhere that comes back to reflect badly on your company.
So, it is one of those things, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. It is a good learning tool to be a passive observer, but can be a terrible tool in the hands of an unscrupulous person.
27th February 2005
It’s Sunday already, and that makes me sad.
Yesterday kind of flew by, and that happens when you go in to work for part of the day. Then Sarah and I headed over to the school roller skating party. I got out there again and whipped around, weaving through the little urchins. But this time, I skated with rollerblades, the first time I had ever done that in a rink. Interesting and hard on my shins from turning so much, but a ton better than roller skates.
But yesterday I came across a program called Sothink Decompiler. It is basically a flash decompiler. This is raise a lot of controversy among Flash developers but read about why I think that it is a good thing to have.
Sections Updated: Flash , Entertainment
How do I control my margin vs. padding? Is there any other way to get around using the “child” element hack?
As I have been writing more and more CSS, I have found that the best rule of thumb is that when placement is concerned, do not use any sort of padding-left, or padding-right in Internet Explorer. When I use padding for top and bottom, that doesn’t affect things too much, but because IE adds all padding values to the actual size of a table cell, or div, it is unpredictable at best.
But even when I use margin to add space to the left and right of an element, I have problems with that measurement being consistent between browser types. As a result, I have a bunch of ugly child element hacks that look something like this;
div.mainContent{
margin-left:20px;
}
/* This hack will re-set the margin left in Mozilla browsers */
body > div.mainContent{
margin-left:10px;
}
This is the problem I am having. It is stupid extra code, and if a different user comes in later to use this stylesheet, they may have no idea without lengthy, code bloating comments on what this specific hack is all about.
So, what I should have done from the start when creating placement for elements was to use relative placement. Relative placement mean, in relation to, and seems to be consistent across browser, even old ones. So for this previous example, I would use this code instead;
div.mainContent{
width:200px;
position:relative;
top:10px;
left:20px;
}
When using Relative positioning, you can use any of these value pairs, top, left, bottom, and right. But I think you will find that you will use top and left the most.
From here on out, I am going to stay away from using Margin for positioning and use this instead.
How do I validate my .html for xhtml when it has Flash in it? What is the Satay method?
I had read about how to validate any .html files with Flash included in an article by A List Apart a couple of months back. Now as we are nearing the end of the project development, I am needing to go through and finalize the details in browser compliance and also in XHTML validation.
The Satay method was created by A List Apart, and it is a way to get around the non standards compliant, <embed> tag. If you are having problems validating your flash integrated documents, you can read the article on the Satay Method at A List Apart’s website.
This is what I found.
The article doesn’t go into too much depth. If you read, you will notice that you will be loading the actual movie into a blank movie container. The article doesn’t specify, however, how big that container should be in relation to the actual movie. It only say that it should be small so that it can load quickly, hopefully less than 4k.
What I found worked for me, was to set the container to the same dimensions as the actual movie I was loading. In this case, the movie I was loading was 740 x 100, so I made a container of the same size.
The second thing that I did different is in how I loaded the movie. The article says to pass a variable through the get string to the Flash movie container similar in fashion to this;
c.swf?path=movie.swf
In this example, I actually stripped off everything after the question mark (?), and changed the actual actionscript information in the container movie.
His method suggests you enter this into the first frame of your container’s timeline;
_root.loadMovie(_root.path,0);
I changed mine so that the path to the movie was actually in the container. In this case, the end result looked like this;
_root.loadMovie(’/main_banner.swf’,0);
The final thing that I learned was actually about child elements in using the <object> tag. Basically, you can nest additional html information inside of the <object> tag in case the users browser does not understand. It is kind of like an alternative. In this case, we are going to use an image inside of the <object> tag that will display when it fails, or in this case, when the user does not have any version of Flash installed. Which is very rare, with something like 96% rate of use of at least Flash version 5.0
So now I have a valid XHTML compliant document that loads and contains Flash. Pay attention to the final code that is suggested for insertion. The main reason that it works is because it uses both the “data” attribute for the <object> tag, and the <param> tag with the attribute set of name and src to load the movie, which works for loading in both IE and Netscape type browsers.
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